The liberals think they are so smart with their so-called "science"! The earth can take it!

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Go Green!

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73%

The liberals think they are so smart with their so-called "science"! The earth can take it!

12 votes

27%

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Global Biodiversity Down 30 Percent in 40 Years

The world's biodiversity is down 30 percent since the 1970s, according to a new report, with tropical species taking the biggest hit. Humanity is outstripping the Earth's resources by 50 percent — essentially using the resources of one and a half Earths every year, according to the 2012 Living Planet Report, produced by conservation agency the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Top Opinion

You need to add a none option.
Conservatives are not geared for complicated issues. They like things in black and white and see anything different as a threat.
They also seem to lack compassion as is illustrated by their love for GWB. The Chicken Hawk president who had no capacity to feel the pain of others and no compunction at all about killing or sending people to die.

Unfortunately there is nothing that will wake conservatives up.They're so sure they're right
that all other information is dismissed. Conservatism is more of a religion than a political stance complete with unquestioning compliance.

We'd be using up our stock, eventually running out. We may have a billion trees, just for instance, and use 100 million trees a year, but let's say the earth can only produce 75 million trees per year. We can use more than 75 million trees a year but we will wipe out the forests and and eventually HAVE to live on 75 million trees a year because that's all we'll have. That's what I'm thinking they mean.

Because when you won't admit the truth all you have left is lies. We have a responsibility to protect the life on this planet in all it's amazing diversity. It's the only planet we know of with life of any kind and we're killing it !

So how about some "truth" about how our "stimulus" money has been blown on the snazzy green energy policies, that have worked so well...

Like the $570 million tax payer $'s wasted on now bankrupt Solyndra and Beacon Power.

$5.3 million of our cash for belly up Evergreen Solar Inc.

Ener1 now in bankruptcy, despite the $118 million in tax payers money.

The Chevy Volt electric car, (now out of production) each one subsidized by about $250,000 of our money.

The wind industry has shed 10,000 jobs since 2009, while the energy capacity of wind farms has nearly doubled, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

A personal favorite of mine... The Department of Energy spent $230,000 contract to the Association of Energy Services Professionals to develop a green jobs website on energy efficiency jobs, but no real jobs are available.

A study released in July 2011 by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide. WOW, 2%!!!

From the DOE’s Loan Programs Office Web site, $3 billion in loans for AVSR1, Desert Sunlight and Agua Caliente projects would produce 1,300 construction jobs but only 45 permanent jobs. You can do the math.

So how about some "truth" about how our "stimulus" money has been blown on the snazzy green energy policies, that have worked so well...

Like the $570 million tax payer $'s wasted on now bankrupt Solyndra and Beacon Power.

$5.3 million of our cash for belly up Evergreen Solar Inc.

Ener1 now in bankruptcy, despite the $118 million in tax payers money.

The Chevy Volt electric car, (now out of production) each one subsidized by about $250,000 of our money.

The wind industry has shed 10,000 jobs since 2009, while the energy capacity of wind farms has nearly doubled, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

A personal favorite of mine... The Department of Energy spent $230,000 contract to the Association of Energy Services Professionals to develop a green jobs website on energy efficiency jobs, but no real jobs are available.

A study released in July 2011 by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide. WOW, 2%!!!

From the DOE’s Loan Programs Office Web site, $3 billion in loans for AVSR1, Desert Sunlight and Agua Caliente projects would produce 1,300 construction jobs but only 45 permanent jobs. You can do the math.

Feb 2012, Nationwide, about $500 million in Recovery Act funds were allocated to train nearly 125,000 people for green careers. 1 1/2 years later the audit found, only 52,762 people had been trained and 8,035 had found jobs.

The BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah solar power project in the Mojave Desert is consuming 3,500 acres of public land. The massive project is destroying threatened desert tortoises habitat and has directly caused many desert tortoise deaths as well as

Yeah boy, with awesome results like these we'll be saving the planet in no time.

"Maybe we could hire someone to clean the bird crap off these things?"

"A personal favorite of mine... The Department of Energy spent $230,000 contract to the Association of Energy Services Professionals to develop a green jobs website on energy efficiency jobs, but no real jobs are available. "

I believe the Republicans (at least those in control of the Right Wing) DO see the truth. They just don't give a damn. They would rather keep pouring money into the oil companies than save the planet. They would rather protect tax cuts for billionaires than try to feed hungry children. They know the difference between right and wrong. They just don't care.

Anybody with a brain realizes we need to conserve, recycle and preserve. No one disputes that. The problem is the sky is falling left has hyped and distorted the real danger which only hurts the cause. We need balance. Obama wants hype and not reality. We need to use the fuel we have not the fuel we wish we had because it is a pipe dream. Pipe dreams don't pay the bills.

If we aren't careful we won't have any choices.
Now we can choose to find the sweet spots in the green energies.
Later we may be stuck with going back to horse and buggy.
Horses to plow the fields, if we can get them.
Planting last years seeds, if we have them.

Monsanto is another negative for biodiversity.
If we have monoculture (duplicated genetic seed stock) in vast fields and if some bug, virus or whatever takes out some it can run the fields and we could have some hungry times.

Bottom line we have to work together, yes socialism, and not be so self centered. It is actually more in our best interests to work together than to play win-lose games.

Using a big word such as "Biodiversity" is sure to bring opposition from the "grass roots" of the right wing. Such inadvertent mistakes often cause the misinformed to commence a rant about some oblique or barely attached issue of the matters and to reject the wholly valid premise of the matter. Understand that the average education level of these right wing supporters is somewhere between eighth grade and high school graduate, and you realize that the complexities of the worlds of science and statistics are beyond their grasp, so the automatic rejection is triggered by the encompassing description of these "big words".

Communicate the messages in terms that can be more easily understood, like acres of forests that disappeared, species no longer available to hunt or eat, square miles of soilwashed away into rivers and lakes, and such tangible measures, and your message willreach those who can read and think for themselves and create much less opposition.

Maybe, but most will misspell the word and attach it to the "Second Amendment Rights" or some oblique reference to the "Founding Fathers" who never used the word or specifically mentioned that the Govy could engage in studies of the environment or even the planets.

You need to add a none option.
Conservatives are not geared for complicated issues. They like things in black and white and see anything different as a threat.
They also seem to lack compassion as is illustrated by their love for GWB. The Chicken Hawk president who had no capacity to feel the pain of others and no compunction at all about killing or sending people to die.

Unfortunately there is nothing that will wake conservatives up.They're so sure they're right
that all other information is dismissed. Conservatism is more of a religion than a political stance complete with unquestioning compliance.

The truth? You mean the fact that all this "Green Energy" stuff has very little effect on global biodiversity?

The truth that where we get our energy is not the major issue...it's the fact that we human beings need food, need land to live on - so we fill in wetlands, dam rivers, cut down forests, move mountains of earth, etc. The global biodiversity decline is a byproduct of the fact that we humans EXIST. No amout of windmills or solar panels will keep these species from going extinct when we're reproducing at the rate we are.

Habitat destruction and fragmentation (isolation) are the leading threats to aquatic and land biodiversity. So unless the Democrats have some idea on how to slow the world's population growth DRASTICALLY .... to blame this on the Republicans is asinine.

I think what you are saying is that we need to consumer resources to keep the population alive. I agree.

What Foxlips is saying is that we need to be working to reduce our need to extract non-renewable resources that also puts CO2 into the air....and also the water. CO2 in the water changes the pH of the water and affects water habitats.

Both of you are right....just picking on different sides of the issue.I would say that where we get our energy is going to be a bigger and bigger issue environmentally and cost wise into the future. We will never see $0.25 / gallon oil as supply and demand will never let us get there.

That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is this: when it comes to declining global biodiversity; the problems caused by additional CO2 in the air and water as a result of our use of fossil fuels is so INSIGNIFICANT....when compared to the damage humans do by merely existing and encroaching on their habitats.

If you are old enough to remember the green movement back in the 70's and 80's....
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and all the rest were shouting "zero population growth" at the top of their lungs. The "Stop at Two" (kids) slogan was their mantra - because all of their research showed that human expansion into wildlife habitats was BY FAR the most fatal to the other species.

At the beginning of the 90's as public opinion soured on China and their Draconian population control measures, these groups backed away from this position and unbelievably wiped it from their list of "important issues". It has since been replaced with "Global Warming/Climate Change". Even though the climate scientists ALWAYS follow their greenhouse gas sermon with the EXACT SAME "unsustainable population growth" statements.

So the green groups avoid the issue and collect their donations, the scientists talk about their (cooked) data and collect their grants, and Foxlips blames ...

That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is this: when it comes to declining global biodiversity; the problems caused by additional CO2 in the air and water as a result of our use of fossil fuels is so INSIGNIFICANT....when compared to the damage humans do by merely existing and encroaching on their habitats.

If you are old enough to remember the green movement back in the 70's and 80's....
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and all the rest were shouting "zero population growth" at the top of their lungs. The "Stop at Two" (kids) slogan was their mantra - because all of their research showed that human expansion into wildlife habitats was BY FAR the most fatal to the other species.

At the beginning of the 90's as public opinion soured on China and their Draconian population control measures, these groups backed away from this position and unbelievably wiped it from their list of "important issues". It has since been replaced with "Global Warming/Climate Change". Even though the climate scientists ALWAYS follow their greenhouse gas sermon with the EXACT SAME "unsustainable population growth" statements.

So the green groups avoid the issue and collect their donations, the scientists talk about their (cooked) data and collect their grants, and Foxlips blames the "evil" Republicans because they don't buy into the green energy gamble. As if windmills, solar panels, and bio-fuels really matter one iota while the forests/marshes are being plowed under for housing and farmland.

And the CO2 entering into our water from non-renewable energy use is (again) a mere pittance compared to the C02 that has been pumping out of the volcanic vents on the ocean floor for millions of years.

Exactly. Any talk of population control is WAY too radical for people to deal with. We also have no right to tell these undeveloped countries "we have condos and cities and farms and highways... but you're not ALLOWED to develop your land or dam your rivers because you'll destroy habitat".

Everything else may buy us a bit of time, but the nothing adresses the root cause. So we can try our best to fight pollution, create protected areas, etc. but it's basically just a matter of time before we're living on top of one another and biodiversity loses.

Blaming this group or that group is like having an F5 tornado heading straight for your house and arguing about whether to leave the windows open or closed ....like it MATTERS.